The Disconnect

Here on the plains south of the Moose Mountains, there are two main industries: agriculture and oil. When you need money to keep farming, you go work on the rigs.

There are some proud farmers and ranchers who get by with what they can earn from their land, and sometimes fight a losing battle to keep the oil wells off it. There are some people here only for the oilfield work, who have little or no connection to any farm in the area. But for many people, the two industries have formed interwoven strands of their lifestyle for generations.

Recently I have heard of people quitting farming to work full time in the oilfield. One said his only regret was that he didn't do it sooner. Others carry on, quite literally using their oilfield income to keep their farms going.

The problem is the rising cost of just about everything except farm produce. A farm can't be run as a stable business if the costs keep going up while the revenue stays flat. Some farmers have been coping by expanding their acreage, spreading some of their costs over a larger area of production and hoping the per-acre costs don't overwhelm the per-acre revenue. How long will that hope hold?

And why the squeeze?

I just finished reading an overview of similar problems in Montana (in Part One of Jared Diamond's book, Collapse). Diamond related a story to highlight the difficulty farmers face. At one time, if a farmer wanted to buy a truck, he would sell two cows. Now, to buy a truck, he must sell 25 cows.

To an urban person accustomed to inflation, that might not seem wrong. Prices go up. But why hasn't the price of cows gone up? Sure, the urban cost of living goes up, but so does the average wage. Back on the farm, when the cost of living and of farming goes up, what is the farmer to do? He can't just grow more cows on the same amount of land.

Reflecting on this, I realized that the problem is built into the foundations of our economy. Because our economic growth is fueled by oil (and coal and natural gas) and not by growth in biological production, there is a disconnect between the performance of the overall economy and the returns to agriculture. If the overall economy was dependent on biological production for its fuel, then the price of biological products would keep pace. Grain would be valued for the energy stored in its carbohydrates; that value would be reflected in the price of a grain-fed cow; and a farmer selling two cows could still get the same return in material goods as his father did. Instead, fossil fuels are used to squeeze more and more biological production out of less and less human labour, holding the price of those biological products low. Meanwhile all the rest of the economy is allowed to surge along on the power of fossil fuels, effectively disconnected from the reality of biological limits - for a while.

In Montana, the problem is much more acute than in this area, because land prices are rising steeply due to demand for homes and acreages in the beautiful mountain landscapes. Farmers cannot expand their operations to spread costs, because the land costs more than they can earn back by farming it, even over a lifetime. In the desirable mountain valley areas, farming is on its way out.

When I read this, I remembered Eleutheros's post, "Unlike Coin," and wondered whether a farmer who focused on direct use - growing food and fibre for his own needs rather than for the money it could earn - could persist in those Montana mountains. Rising property taxes would be a challenge. That might be overcome, but what about estate taxes? How would a direct-use homesteader pass that homestead on to a child?

How ironic that we have structured our economy to grow and grow and grow - at the expense of growing food. We are running an enormous gamble, that the unknown jackpot will contain some sort of unlimited supply of clean energy (pdf), that we will win it before the existing energy sources become inadequate or intolerable, and that energy alone will be enough of a foundation when we finally turn our attention to coping with the limits of soils, water, oceans, and climate.

UPDATE: Eleutheros has a new post about our response to limits - depressing or bracing, depending on how you want to take it.

Common Life

I am home from the first weekend of a Common Life program at the Calling Lakes Centre. Yes, another program, another drive in our car. As Eleutheros says, "hang head, shuffle feet . . ."

I certainly notice the irony of travelling over two hours' drive away from my own community to become part of a dispersed community of people and thereby learn how to be in community. I notice the irony of sitting here wrestling with the right and wrong of all this, instead of getting all the carrots and beets and rutabagas that I dug last week properly stored away. I wonder again whether I could have made the trip to the Calling Lakes Centre by bicycle, and notice that if I had, I wouldn't even be home yet, and it would be mighty cold out there, pedalling into that fierce east wind.

I met a spinner. She wants to teach us hand-spinning. I asked if she had ever worked with nettle fibre, and the idea was new to her, but she had been planning to try flax. When I go to our next meeting, I hope to take along some nettle fibre, and see if she can teach me to spin it.

I laughed more than I have laughed in weeks.

There was very little top-down, teacher-student, giver-receiver stuff; just a framework and time to explore it and people to share the walking and climbing and puzzling and struggling and laughing and hugging and all that. Stuff that no amount of books or websites or good intentions have given me. Maybe once I learn to find and build these connections and live these practices in Common Life community, I will be better able to do the same here . . .

Or maybe I will be even farther out of step with my neighbours.

And even more excessively busy.

I got lost on the way home.

There was a towering cloud of smoke somewhere close to Heward. I could see it from several towns back, and as I got closer, I was sure I didn't want to drive through it. At Creelman I found a grid road angling east to pass upwind of it. Once I was on that road, I got thinking about the Gap, and how I'd love to drive through there. I started to glimpse the hills ahead, and thought I should be a bit farther south, to strike the little dirt road through the Gap. So when I came onto 47, I turned south for a few miles. When I turned east again, it was hilly enough that I couldn't see much of the road ahead. After a while it dwindled, but I kept hoping. When I topped a rise and saw trees in the distance, straight ahead where the road should be, I ignored that detail, hoping for a bend. And so the gravel gave way to a surface of stones and dirt, and ruts appeared, and I topped a sharper rise and saw my trail's end, next to a new oil well. Actually I could have continued, if I'd been willing to turn south on a wheeltrack in tall dry grass, but the Geo Metro has very little clearance, and I didn't want to risk a grass fire.

I backtracked onto good gravel, and found a southbound road, and then the next road east. It was delightful, dwindling and narrowing but carrying on, over little rises and through hollows, past native pastures on the rougher places, and up over one lonely little peak that gave a view of the whole low rolling area and the rampart of the Moose Mountains stretching along the northeastern horizon. As I drove on, an area of trees ahead began to look familiar, and the farmyard to the right began to look like one I knew, though I'd never seen it from this angle. Suddenly there was a large slough on my left, just north of the road, and I was startled to see it, because I knew I had spent hours on several occasions working outdoors just over the next ridge, without knowing the water was there. I hadn't even noticed that there was a ridge to hide anything.

But all this flashed through my mind in an instant, without capturing my attention, because on the water were seven swans, and on a bridge of ice across the middle was a bald eagle.

An unknown road, and seven swans and an eagle. Significant?

Wishful thinking?

I came out on the White Lake Road, several miles south of where I'd hoped to be. Knowing I'd add at least four miles to my trip, or maybe eight, I turned north to see the Gap.

There were survey stakes that looked to me like well centres for new oil wells, again and again along the roadside. I think there were half a dozen, almost all of them in native grassland, one in a low floodplain. And here I was taking a Sunday drive.

Could I give up driving?

Would it make any difference? Would it mean anything?

I turned onto another unknown road, one that I had often wondered about, and sure enough, it was a shortcut to the Gap. I passed a gravel pit and newly cultivated cropland, and hardly noticed the wild beauty of the looming hills on either side, the beauty that draws me back to that place. Before I knew it, I was through the Gap and on into Star Valley, noticing more new oil wells, and a drilling rig.

As I cruised down the paved road towards Kisbey, the cell phone rang, and I confessed that I'd got lost for a while, but I was on my way and would be home soon. On the highway again, I pushed the car up close to the speed limit. A huge red pickup truck with chrome grillework loomed behind me, crowding close. I thought about our "52MPG" license plate and wondered if he noticed it. At times like that I'm glad to be driving the speed limit, so they won't be thinking, "Yeah, sure you get 52MPG, when you're only doing 50!" The truck passed me, and as it pulled away ahead, I read the slogan in white letters on the black-tinted rear windows of the cab: "Save some OIL! Ride a RIGGER!"

Common Life? Here? There? Anywhere?

Seven swans and an eagle.

I don't know.

Climate Change Is Good For Me

They've extended the ice-core record back to 800,000 years, and still no challenge to our modern triumph: the highest atmospheric CO₂ levels in the entire record! And beyond! Way beyond! Hooray for civilization!

I did a Blogger blogs search for reaction to this news, and found Tim Denton's cheery response, as well as an even cheerier post of his from a couple of days ago, in which he has the arrogance to suggest that (gasp) humans may be contributing to global warming! But wait - his arrogance goes even further: he is so certain about the future of Earth's climate, he can assure us that this anthropogenic global warming is a good thing. The larger trend is global cooling, you see, so this warming event is a pretty fine human accomplishment.

I'm so relieved. But, Mr. Denton, I have such a long habit of worrying, please excuse me, but I still have a couple of questions.

How do you know we're increasing the CO₂ at the correct rate? I mean, sure, it's colder now than it has been at various times in the past 15,000 years, but how do you know just exactly how much higher the CO₂ should be now than it was then, to correct for the mystery factor that's been making it colder? Wait a minute, I'm confused. I thought you said that the global warming hypothesis doesn't fit the facts, and you mentioned those warmer times . . . Were you saying that there is no link, after all? But then, how can you say that our global warming is good?

Oh dear. I wanted to believe your good news. Give me a minute to spell out the implicit points of your argument here, and see if I can understand it.

During time period A (shortly after the last ice age), temperatures were higher than they are today.
During time period A, CO₂ levels had not been significantly elevated by humans.
Therefore, CO₂ levels being elevated by humans did not cause the high temperatures of time period A.
Therefore we should not expect CO₂ levels to have any significant effect on temperatures.

Umm, Mr. Denton. Isn't that argument analogous to this one:

Car A was in an accident.
Car A was not travelling over the speed limit.
Therefore travelling over the speed limit did not cause Car A's accident.
Therefore we should not expect speed to have any significant effect on car accidents.

I'm sure you'll agree with me that this argument is false. So, now I can happily accept your larger argument, that CO₂ is leaching out of the atmosphere causing global cooling, and humans came up with their Industrial Revolution just in time to turn this around. Maybe, to clear up your minor confusion about the global warming hypothesis, you'll be glad to hear my alternative interpretation of those earlier warm times. You see, things moved slower then. CO₂ levels increased and decreased over centuries and millenia, instead of just decades. So you see (I hope you're following this), it could be that the current temperature just hasn't caught up to the current CO₂ level. If I may be so bold, I'd say we have only barely begun to see the scope of our accomplishment here. We're going to set that global cooling trend back a lot more yet! Good news, I know.

But I'm such a worrywort, Tim, my friend. What if - what if it's true what I hear, that the sun is kind of slowing down and giving us less light and warmth, and - what's that you say? Oh, yes, I know, that makes global warming a good thing, but, but - what if we're doing it all too fast, kind of like burning up your whole firewood supply in the first few days of winter? What if we run out of carbon-based fossil fuels before this solar dimming spell turns around, and then - oh dear, I hate to think of it - and then we don't have all that petroleum to fuel our economy to keep the research going to find another solution - oh please, Mr. Denton, tell me you've got this all figured out.

Oh, I'm freaking out here. Let me take a break, go for a walk, breathe deeply . . .

Ah, that's better. Now, you'll be happy to hear that I can be an optimist too. I just realized that I've been worrying too much about this whole thing. I really was wrong to think that human activity could disrupt natural cycles so badly. Sure, CO₂ levels are way outside their natural range for the past 800,000 years. The way I see it, we've moved them so fast that the temperature has barely begun to catch up. But here's the good news. The temperature may never catch up! We're about to run out of cheap oil (if we haven't already), but we're still very determined to burn it as fast as we can, so it's probably only a few more decades - or years, even - before oil is suddenly ridiculously expensive, and our CO₂ emissions will drop like a stone. We won't run out of oil, but as soon as we run out of cheap oil, our economy will collapse and we'll leave lots of oil in the ground. Fertilizer will become ridiculously expensive; food production will plummet; people will die and be buried and thus create billions of little carbon sinks; forests will spring up on the abandoned farmland; and lo, the crisis will be over. We could have been cautious and tried to conserve our fossil fuels and spread this CO₂ peak over a few centuries, but no, we made it a harmless little blip.

The Earth will go back to its 40-million-year-old cooling trend, moving slowly enough for us to adapt, research or no research.

And it's all thanks to you and your friends! You climate-change skeptics have been so effective with your bold rallying cries (Damn the tornadoes! . . . go ahead . . . full speed!) that you've completely foiled the dangerous plot of the petroleum conservationists. You knew that we might get all worried about Peak Oil, and actually tackle it successfully, so you created a wonderfully clever diversion with all the noise about climate change. You had us all looking very nearly straight at the scary short-term problem, but not quite. And so we missed it, and it will play out as it should, and in the long run, the world will be safe.

Oh, Mr. Denton, you're my hero.

Five Sisters Found

Madcap Mum posted a picture of an odd-looking hill, and it drew a lot of questions. Some thought it was a modified image, with a fanciful landform plopped into it, but to me the hill looked quite believable as an industrial feature.

Some Googling revealed that the "Five Sisters" hill is a real place in Scotland, also known as the Westwood Bing. Here's the pdf document where I found out about it. The document as a whole is a fascinating discussion of the way old industrial sites are often important habitat, with much higher biodiversity than agricultural land. Attempts to manage this habitat throw some stark, disturbing light on the question of "what is nature?"

But in case you just wanted to know about the hill, here's an excerpt.

Five Sisters

The most spectacular remains of the great West Lothian oil industry have received national recognition and protection. The conical mounds of waste shale, called bings, once dominated this landscape. Many had disappeared by the end of the 20th century but the best-known, the Five Sisters and Greendykes bings, have been designated as scheduled ancient monuments by Historic Scotland.

The industry used local shale to extract crude oil, which was then turned into paraffin. At its peak in the 1860s, there were 120 works, producing 25 million gallons of oil a year.

Miners came to the area from Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, the north of England and all over Scotland. When the industry collapsed in the early 1960s, the bings contained 200 million tons of waste shale. Many were mined for building material. But the rest became important local landmarks. The Five Sisters, the only bing with more than one peak, is valued so highly that it is now included in the county crest.

The document has a picture of the bing from the opposite angle, showing the steep fall slopes of the peaks. (Jump to Page 16.)

We have a similar (if less visually striking) situation close to home here, around Bienfait (east of Estevan), where old ridges of overburden from the coal mines were left in place long enough to become overgrown with shrubs. The steep narrow troughs between them held water, and wetland communities developed, complete with trees along their margins, in a landscape that previously had almost no deep ponds or trees at all. When the mining company and the government's environmental officials were talking about reclaiming this highly-disturbed landscape, the local people protested that it was some of the most important habitat for wildlife in the entire region. As far as I know, a decision was made to leave the ridges and wetlands as they are.

One thing that fascinates me in the Five-Sisters story is the fact that there was a large oil shale industry in Scotland, but it collapsed, due to competition from what we now call conventional oil production. Now there is talk of huge oil shale reserves in the U.S. becoming economically viable for production as conventional petroleum reserves are depleted. I wonder how they compare to these that were mined in Scotland. It's funny how we hear about things like extraction of oil from shale as if it were a new advance, when in fact it has been done in the past, and (I just learned) is an active industry in some other parts of the world. It brings to mind my post about small stoves that burn wood at much higher efficiency through a gasification process, and my Dad's response. He said that gasification is nothing new. It had some significant use in the past, for automotive fuel and for municipal gas supplies, during periods when petroleum was in short supply.

I wonder what proportion of the so-called promising areas of energy research are actually just re-examinations of old ideas that were bypassed for one reason or another in the past. Those recycled ideas are not great places to look for a breakthrough, I'd say.

Sand Hills

Mule deer on a dune partially revegetated with lance-leaved psoralea or scurf-pea (Psoralea lanceolata)

Alright, here's a bit about where I've been lately: the Great Sand Hills, in southwestern Saskatchewan. I find it fascinating that you can see the outline of the sandhill area on satellite imagery and on landcover maps derived from it. So much of southern Saskatchewan is in cropland that the major native grassland areas show up in contrast. One of these areas is the Great Sand Hills, where the soil is too sandy for annual crop production, and much of the topography is stabilized dunes, too choppy for any sort of cultivation. To me, the outline of the area looks a bit like a chess knight, or the upper part of a seahorse, in profile, facing right. See if you can see it on the landcover map when you zoom in on southwestern Saskatchewan. Look for a pinkish area south of the big bend in the South Saskatchewan River west of Lake Diefenbaker. Once you see it on there, try it on Google Earth.

I joined the Plant Team, doing rare plant searches and range health assessment as part of the Great Sand Hills Regional Environmental Study, for ten days in the latter part of July. The team, with somewhat shifting membership as knowledgeable people were available, had been living at this rented ranch house in the west central part of the sandhills since late May.


I took the last available bedroom. Hmmm - am I going to like this? Maybe once I take over the bed.

At least I had my guitar along.

Actually, I abandoned this room partly through my stay, and rolled out my sleeping bag in the basement rec room. Others did the same, and soon somebody commented about the refugee camp in the basement. It was just too hot upstairs in the early evening, when we were trying to get to sleep so that we could wake up and look lively at 4:30 a.m. At first we tried to leave the house at about six, but we gradually worked it back even earlier, so that we were arriving on our sites at about six. By eight o'clock in the morning, you could already feel the heat, and by the time we finished our last site of the day in the early afternoon, we were really needing some shade. Or an air conditioned truck. The drive back to the ranch was good for that. Often it was forty-five minutes; for some sites it was double that. "Oh, I drive a truck for the environment . . ."


At least I got to hang my laundry out to dry. I was amused and disturbed by the inconsistencies of our situation. At home I haven't even got around to putting up a clothesline, but I drive a tiny car, or bike, or walk. Out at this ranch, the plant people had brought along eco-friendly cleaning products and strung up a clothesline, and someone objected to the plastic sandwich bags I bought in the convenience store on a trip into town because I had forgotten to bring a reusable sandwich box - and we spent our days driving monstrous trucks all up and down the countryside. (Well, that and walking all up and down our sites.)

There were reasons, of course. We had to have vehicles with high clearance, to keep from dragging bottom or starting the crispy-crunchy-dry grass on fire. And part of the study design involved spreading the work over the whole area through the season, to avoid bias, so we couldn't just start at one end and camp our way across the area to save on driving.

Couldn't we just skip the study altogether? One team member was keen to see this study help to "keep them out" - to protect the sandhills from gas development. I reminded her that most of us depend on this gas to heat our homes each winter. As we discussed it further, she was shocked to learn that gas and oil development is often unwanted by landowners, but ultimately there is nothing they can do to stop it. If they refuse the developer's offer for a surface lease, and try to fight it, then an arbitration board will step in and tell them what they will be paid for the surface lease. They have no choice about giving a lease. Stepping back to look at the bigger picture, if some ranchers and environmentalists and concerned citizens band together and get some tighter planning restrictions on gas development in the sandhills, how long will it last? Eventually the pressure to get that gas will be too great, and the restrictions will be lifted.

But maybe the study will suggest some ways to do the development better, with less impact. I don't know. That wasn't my reason for being there. I just had fun wandering up and down sandhills, seeing the 360-degree vistas from the crests of dunes, bantering with my teammates. More than once I said I would do this work for free. When W saw me struggling up the side of a blowout, throwing the quadrat frame ahead of me and then lunging upward on all fours, he asked if I still felt the same way, or if maybe they weren't paying me enough for this. But I was still happy, just a bit embarrassed that I had tried to scramble up the steep and sliding sand instead of taking a long way around where the slope was easier, and feeling foolish with him standing up there watching me.

I meant to take the camera along on one of our workdays, but I was always too focussed on the stuff I needed for work. Even at that, I forgot my lunch one day. W and S gave me parts of theirs, and it was the best lunch I had in the whole ten days! Anyway, the only pictures I have are from the immediate vicinity of the ranch house where we stayed. They'll still give you some idea of what it was like.

The work involved a lot of walking, back and forth in a set pattern across a site, while scanning all the vegetation in a 5 m wide swath for rare plants. Sometimes the site was flat open grassland, but sometimes it looked more like this.


Or this.


One site I recall had mostly creeping juniper at ground level, plus waist- to shoulder-high wolf willow (silverberry, Elaeagnus commutata) throughout. Then there was a site down in a broad low area where water table supports poplars and water birch - making it very difficult to see our flags to keep on track with the search pattern.

Once, while filling out a site form, W asked for my estimate of the % cover of a speargrass, Stipa comata. I said the estimate varies depending on what the botanist is wearing on their ankles.

I loved it all.

Some views of the dune north of the ranch house:




And looking back from the dune toward the ranch house:

I noticed a lot of terrain like this, where there is a low flat, bordered by higher, very rough land, known as "choppy dune." The ranch buildings seem to huddle at the edge of the flat, taking shelter from the sand ridges but staying out of them. The loneliness of the place was very appealing to me, as long as I didn't start thinking about what it would take to survive there, independently.




One night I stayed alone at the ranch. At the end of the ten-day shift, some of the team members were finished, and some had a four-day break before returning for another shift. All left for their homes or holidays, except for me. I stayed on to wait for Garth and James to pick me up so we could travel on westward to see Ruth's graduation from her three-week music program at the Air Cadet Summer Training Centre at Penhold, Alberta.

Something woke me - perhaps the wind slamming a bedroom door upstairs.

Soundtrack: crickets.


Look away from that yard light, and what do you see?

I see a glint on the horse trailers. Nothing more. No distant traffic, or yard lights, or glow from a town - nothing. Just the dark of the sandhill night.

Klein's Breath in the Grand Scheme of Things

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein admits a connection between humans and global warming:

I don't argue with the science that all of us - as we exhale, as the population grows, as there are more vehicles on the streets and more carbons produced - that we contribute to global warming.

I wonder how terrifying it was for him to admit that to himself, given that he thinks his own breath is part of the problem. Really, Mr. Premier. The natural functioning of a human body only contributes to global warming after breathing stops. Up until then, you're a carbon sink. Carbon in, when you eat - remember carbohydrates? Carbon out, when you breathe. More carbon in than out, as you grow. Wait - it just occurred to me - dieting contributes to global warming! Somebody call Hollywood!

Relax, though. While some people shrink, others grow.

By the way, Mr. Premier, on your second point - population growth does not absolutely have to be a contributing factor. If the existing population were living with carbon uptake and emissions in balance, and the additional people didn't upset that balance, no problem.

On the other hand, we don't have to have "more vehicles" to have a problem. The existing vehicles have contributed to the existing problem, and will continue to add to it.

Let's get this very clear. A human being can exist within the carbon cycle, in balance. In fact, if we're out of balance, we can't carry on indefinitely, because we're using up a carbon sink - whether it's a forest being burned up in cooking fires (and not replaced by new growth), or the oilsands being mined out, or soil fertility being exhausted growing biofuel feedstocks. At some point we will be forced to resolve the imbalance.

We might want to consider resolving it early. Wouldn't it be nice to have some oil left in the oilsands after it becomes fabulously valuable as an industrial feedstock? Wouldn't it be nice to have some options about how we make the transition to a different lifestyle?

Yes, a different lifestyle. That's what I said.

Most of humanity currently has - or aspires to - a lifestyle that is beyond any possibility of balance within the carbon cycle. Since it comes down to lifestyle, each one of us has the choice: do we want the imbalance resolved or not?

It would be nice, though, if our politicians could help to make this clear.

A Fey Mood

Ouch.

I hadn't thought about the consequences coming on so fast.

(found at A Payne Hollow Visit)

Worth the wait

Don't miss this new post from Eleutheros: The Oil Standard.

All the pieces fit.

Environmental Scare-Mongering . . .

. . . from a Kyoto critic.

Licia Corbella's doom-and-gloom article appeared in the Calgary Sun on December 11, 2005. She stated that in order to meet our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 270 megatonnes (mt). She then reviewed figures from Environment Canada, presenting them as evidence that the target is impossible to reach.

In 2002, Canada's entire manufacturing sector spewed out 62.9 megatonnes.

Then comes the transportation sector, which includes all those planes, trains and automobiles, pipelines and Paul Martin's tax-exempt Canada Steamship Lines freighters.

Ground, park and dock them all and we would remove 190 mt of GHGs.

Combine those two sectors -- manufacturing and transportation -- and that adds up to 252.9 megatonnes, leaving us short by 17.1 megatonnes.

She goes on to raise the specter of billions of Canadian tax dollars flowing to Russia to buy emissions credits, because, she implies, it's obvious that we can't shut down our entire manufacturing and transportation sectors.

Let's back up to 1990. That's the base year for Canada's Kyoto commitment. Our target is to reduce our emissions to 6% below 1990 levels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I remember it, Canada did have a manufacturing sector in 1990. Canada also had a transportation sector. If these sectors are the big baddies, obviously we shouldn't need to totally eliminate them to achieve a 6% reduction.

Check the Environment Canada figures for yourself, and see how cleverly Corbella has chosen her sectors. Obviously transportation has to be included, because everybody knows it's the other guy's SUV that's the problem. At 180 mt for 2002, transportation is a big part of the 719 mt total. A big part, yes, but where's the other 539 mt? Clearly it's not all in the manufacturing sector. But manufacturing is the perfect contentious target, vilified by those eager to assign blame for environmental problems, and defended by their opponents as the engine of our economy. Corbella knew exactly what she was doing.

She was scaring people into assuming that they must watch helplessly as government either turns Canada into a have-not country, or backs out of its Kyoto commitment.

In reality, where is the rest of the 539 mt total? For starters, it's in "Electricity and Heat Generation" at 129 mt. That refers to "thermal combustion-derived electricity" - such as the electricity that is powering my computer right now, that runs my refrigerator and my freezer and my washer and dryer and my Christmas lights and the lights that get left on when no-one is in the room. If I reduce my use of this electricity, it won't cripple the economy.

Where else? How about Residential [Energy Use], which refers to fuel combustion in homes, at 44 mt. Turn down your thermostat at night (I have to remember to put some slippers on when blogging after bedtime), invest in some weatherstripping and insulation, maybe upgrade some windows. How will that hurt the economy? Sure, if everybody did enough of it, maybe the demand for natural gas would level off. Drilling in southwest Saskatchewan might slow down a bit.

What about agriculture? We hear so much about belching cows. This appears in the table as "Enteric Fermentation," and it amounts to only 22 mt. Another 8 mt are attributed to "Manure Management." Meeting the targets doesn't mean giving up all our steak and milk. We might do well to look at our crop production practices, though. "Agricultural Soils" refers to emissions of nitrous oxide; this happens when nitrogen from fertilizers of various kinds goes partly into the air instead of the plants. The figures are estimated, with large uncertainties, but the value given is 29 mt. Then you have to consider emissions associated with fertilizer and pesticide production, and fuel combustion to run the tillage and harvest equipment; these figures are hidden in other categories, such as "Industrial Processes" and the already-mentioned "Transportation."

If you're running a total in your head, you know there's still a big chunk missing. The "Industrial Processes" that I just mentioned account for 51 mt. (How many of Corbella's readers would realize that there was an entire category separate from "Manufacturing," called "Industrial Processes"?) "Waste," mostly solid waste disposal on land, gives another 25 mt.

Of particular significance to southeast Saskatchewan, given our economic dependence on the oilfield and on coal-fired power generation, are the categories of "Fossil Fuel Industries" at 73 mt and "Fugitive Emissions" at 55 mt. Not only do we release GHGs when we generate power or drive our cars, we also release them when we produce the fuels in the first place. (In case you're wondering, "Fugitive Emissions" refers to things like spills, leaks, venting and flaring during oil and gas production, plus a much smaller amount of methane released from coal deposits during mining.)

I haven't covered all the categories. Most of the rest are relatively small; "Land Use, Land-Use Change" actually has a negative figure to allow for CO2 uptake during plant growth. As you can plainly see, there are a lot more areas to work on than just transportation and manufacturing. By choosing these two sectors, Corbella skilfully directed attention away from the areas where our own individual initiative could most quickly and painlessly make a difference. If we're merely trying to meet Kyoto targets, the picture is not nearly so bleak as Corbella paints it.

A much more serious criticism of the Kyoto Protocol is that it will merely slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Even if all the targets were met around the world, greenhouse gases would continue to rise. And even if we could somehow reverse that trend, and begin to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we would still have a long way to go just to bring them back within the range where these gases have fluctuated over the last 650,000 years. We have already drastically altered the chemistry of our atmosphere, and as I have noted previously, climate change may be the least of our problems.

A reprieve

In the U.S., the proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling has been pulled from a House spending-reduction bill. This move came after a group of Republicans said they would vote against the bill unless the proposal was removed.

Of course, there could still be other moves to have the drilling go ahead, but we can hope that I was wrong.

The more I read about American politics, the more I admire their system. As far as I can see, Canadian elected representatives have far less power to act independently of their party leadership. Basically, Canadian citizens get one chance in four years to influence the overall policy direction. After that, you can try talking to your MP, but unless you've got the time and resources for direct lobbying of the leaders, you're not likely to make much difference. And of course, if you live west of the Great Lakes, it's painfully obvious as you watch election results come in, that your one chance in four years doesn't amount to much.

The 2000-acre scam

I can't tie this story to Arcola other than to say that we're oil country, too, and almost all of us drive cars. The few of us who walk for our errands will be even fewer now that the sidewalks are covered in snow and ice. Anyway, another barrier has fallen for the proponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska). What amazes me is that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is still talking about the 2000 acres that will be affected as if they were a single block of land.

Drilling supporters note the provision only opens 2,000 acres of the refuge’s 1.5-million acre coastal plain – an area Frist said is “the equivalent to a postage stamp on a tennis court.”

A mist net on a tennis court would be a better analogy. How would that affect your tennis game?

I think the drilling supporters could be honest about this and still get what they want. Matthew Simmons is convinced that we need to find alternatives to petroleum fuels, immediately, but he still supports drilling in the Refuge because of the need to buy some time for transition. I am assuming that, as an industry insider, he would be aware of the reality of those 2000 acres.

As I see it, the drilling will go ahead, but an honest discussion might help some people see the real ecological costs of their own day-to-day choices. A Senator's comments affect more than just the outcome of a Senate vote. Who is going to worry about cutting back on unnecessary car trips, when their leaders are steadily reassuring them that oil development is environmentally benign?

Five point one, point two...

After posting "Fives" (previous post; read it first to make sense of this one), I drove out to the farm, which gave me computer-free solitude in which I thought of all sorts of things I should have said.

Five Creatures: Uh-oh, I listed a bunch of officially rare creatures. That's far out of character. Here's Pet Peeve #6: being sent chasing hither and yon after reports of rare plants, wasting everybody's time and resources on an effort that might shift a development twenty or thirty metres left or right if something officially rare happens to be growing there that year (and visible during the week that I happen to be there). Let's face it: native prairie is rare. If oil is unlimited, or if technology is about to come up with a substitute, then there's no need to be drilling for the oil that's under native prairie. And if oil scarcity is looming, drilling on native prairie isn't going to do much to stave off the crunch.

So, other creatures I'd like to see instead of the official rarities? Brumbies! No, not really, I don't need to go flying halfway round the world just to see brumbies, and don't tell Garth I mentioned them, because he dearly longs to take the family to Australia. I figure I've got plenty to see right around here. I also have an irrational dread of meeting one of their deadly poisonous creatures. I can't imagine appreciating the wonder of the moment between being bitten or stung, and dropping dead.

How did brumbies come to mind? It must have been the article I saw recently about conflicts between grazing and parks management in the high country of Victoria. "The Man from Snowy River" would probably still make it onto a short list of my favourite movies, but I'd completely forgotten the word "brumbies." In Moose Mountain Provincial Park just north of here, we have a similar heritage of grazing within the park, and from what I have heard, the cattlemen have been quite proactive in figuring out ways to manage the grazing patterns and avoid overuse of particular areas. In the Australian article, they mentioned

...testing...virtual fencing technology that uses global positioning systems to plot exclusion areas. The information is stored in a collar or ear tag on cattle and a signal emitted when they approach a no-go zone.

"Signal" sounds like a euphemism for something that animal-rights activists might not like. What is it, a blue heeler's growl? Or would it be more like the tried-and-true signal that a cow gets from an electric fence? Say, I wonder if a growling fence would work. Speaking of electric fences, I fondly remember a young man from California who came up to Alberta to train me in collecting surface soil samples for microbial oil exploration. He gave me my first introduction to GPS technology, but Alberta gave him his first introduction to electric fences. Too bad I hadn't thought to warn him. He had a wonderful self-deprecating way of telling a story. He said he pulled his quad up to the fence, and went to lift the wire over it. He couldn't figure out why a wasp kept stinging him every time he grabbed the wire.

Back to the Australian grazing story: a GPS system to herd cattle is something I had already daydreamed about, several years ago. It was after I heard that grazing behaviour is substantially different without predators harassing the herds. Grass health declines under more constant, distributed grazing. I wondered if you could use a GPS collar system to keep herds bunched and moving, and thus keep pastures healthier and more productive. Sounds like my daydream just might come true.

What's a levee, and why, why, why...

There were times today, as I stared at the grasses where my sampling frame had fallen, when my work seemed ridiculously unimportant. I know there are always tragedies unfolding somewhere in the world, and some huge tragedies pass without our notice. Still, that knowledge does nothing to ease my mind about the devastation in New Orleans.

I've been reading a lot about it on the Internet. At first, people were just sharing what they knew of the events, and how to help. Then there was a shift to dismay and anger as the situation got worse instead of better. Today, perhaps because the relief efforts seem to be taking hold, people have begun to tackle the questions of why. Why did so many people stay? Why were there no buses to move those who couldn't drive? Why is the relief taking longer than we expect? Why? Why?

Some have suggested, in comments ranging from subtly patronizing to blatantly dismissive, that all this was just the natural consequence of building a major city below sea level. That seemed much too simplistic for me. I had to ask:

How did New Orleans get to be below sea level in the first place?

Was there really a decision some decades ago to pump out a hole and put buildings in it?

According to Wikipedia, there was, but there were also other factors. When New Orleans was first established nearly 300 years ago, the site was chosen because it was high ground. It was also a very important location, near the mouth of the Mississippi River which allowed water transport deep into the interior of the continent. Because of these natural advantages, New Orleans grew rapidly. It stretched out along the natural levees (raised banks) that bordered the river and its former channels. Behind the levees was swampy ground that flooded often, limiting the growth of the city. Finally, early in the twentieth century, the city began using pumps and canals to drain low swampy land for new construction, allowing great expansion. Obviously, this lower land was vulnerable right from the start. However, some other slow and subtle changes have made the situation worse.

No, I'm not talking about climate change.

One change is a complication of draining the low land. Constantly pumping out water has allowed formerly saturated soil to shrink and settle. Gradually, over the last century, the ground under New Orleans has sunk.

Another change is a partly natural process. When a river floods, leaving the confines of its channel, its flow is spread over a much larger area and therefore slows down. In slower water, silt settles to the bottom. Much of this silt ends up on top of the river bank, where the water first slows down. Over time, with repeated flooding, a ridge builds up along the bank. Then the river floods less frequently, so more of the silt is dropped inside the river channel, instead of out on the floodplain. Eventually, the entire river can be raised above the surrounding land. In fact, the term "levee" comes from a French word meaning "lifted."

Of course, once there are buildings on a floodplain, people want to protect them, so they build the levees even higher, and the river floods even less frequently. More silt builds up in the riverbed, and less gets added to the floodplain. Slowly, slowly, the water level moves even higher compared to the land.

These changes, happening over most of the last century, and to some extent over the last three centuries, have put the city lower with respect to surrounding waters.

Then there are changes to the coastal marshlands. When a storm surge driven by a hurricane comes onto the Louisiana coast, it loses much of its height and force in a huge area of marshes. However, these marshes have been disappearing since the 1930s, when the levees of the Mississippi were raised for greater flood protection. Silt from floods used to build up the marshlands, but now that silt goes straight out into deeper water in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, the marshes have been eroding faster than before, because of numerous canals cut through them for shipping and oil exploration. Almost 2000 square miles of marshes have vanished since the 30s, and the loss continues at a rate of "roughly one acre every 33 minutes" (National Geographic, October 2004). If you start into the article I've linked, and the opening description of the hurricane's devastation seems slightly off, just notice when it was written.

Having read all this, I now realize that New Orleans wasn't always a disaster waiting to happen. Its vulnerability grew slowly over many decades. In the meantime it had already become a major port city, an important cultural centre, and a treasured place for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

What happens now? How much of the city will be rebuilt? Can the artificial levees be built to withstand higher storm surges? What about the problems of subsidence, and silt deposition in the riverbed, and loss of coastal marshlands? What can be done to slow or reverse these changes? Or will they continue unabated? When the next major hurricane hits, will the devastation be even worse?

And why do I spend my time monitoring the regrowth of grass on old oil well sites?